Friday, January 22, 2010

Our event with Audrey Niffenegger at the Milwaukee Public Library went very nicely. The family Niffenegger was escorted by Mary Gielow. (Need an author escort? Here's her site. Included are interesting thank-you notes). Paula Kiely and the Milwaukee Public Library crew showed up in full force, as did 120 other enthusiastic fans. Picture at right is in the green room, chatting in between pre-signs.

Here are some interesting tidbits.

1. I learned from wife-of-Mayor-Barrett Kris that she's in a book club.

2. Ms. Niffenegger's parents came up from the Chicago area. Both very nice.

3. The crowd had more 20-and-30-something women than we usually get. The author, the recent movie, or the changed location could all be responsible.

4. As many of you know, we subscribe to the Above the Treeline program, which crunches the inventory of about 200 independent bookstores. Our system was down for the past few weeks while we upgraded our computer, but if we include sales sold since it was down, we'd be the #1 indie bookstore for sales of Her Fearful Symmetry. Admittedly, we've done very well, but we usually don't get much past #5 in ranking. It probably helped that we had three very good reads on the book, and could promote the event for a long time.

It's also possible that a lot of other folks' HSL lines broke, but not too likely.

Thanks to everyone at Scribner and Simon for helping us with this event and the Walls. Also thanks to Paula, Sandy, Patty, and everyone else at the library for letting us sell books (a percentage goes back to the library). Up next, we're really close to getting an author for the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library lunch in April. And if all works out, it's a really great author. I'm very excited.

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Another MPL note. Our event with Katie Gingrass Gallery is over for the fill-the-shelves promotion. Katie's customers bought more than a thousand dollars of books for the Milwaukee Public Library. We're hoping to do another promotion next fall, and we're both hoping to take it to the next level, whatever that means.